


memories we hold (as part of our soul)

by clawsnbeak



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23671003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clawsnbeak/pseuds/clawsnbeak
Summary: “I’m Ronan,” he said, taking the hand that was stretched out to him. He giggled a bit at how grown up it felt.“Adam,” the boy, Adam, had replied, gifting Ronan a shy smile. His accent reminded Ronan of the sweet lady at the candy store who always gave him one piece of candy more when his mom’s back was turned, melodious and languid like the Henrietta sun.“Wanna see my treehouse?” Ronan asked then, pulling Adam up by his hand when he nodded. Ronan didn’t let go of Adam’s hand, instead he let it swing between them.-Childhood best friends Adam and Ronan once made a promise to each other that they would stay friends forever. Neither one of them thought this promise would ever be broken, but it was. Now, with both of them attending Aglionby and a mutual friend, the must find a way to get over their past grief and come out of it together. As friends or as something more.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 18
Kudos: 97





	memories we hold (as part of our soul)

**Author's Note:**

> A multi-chapter fic for the first time in forever!  
> Very excited for this fic and I hope you all like it!!
> 
> (I will add more tags as I go a long)

He saw the bruise first.

The shadows from the late afternoon casted over the boy’s face making it appear bigger than it was.

“How did you get that?” Ronan had asked with childlike curiosity, his hand already moving up to touch the purpling skin.

The boy had flinched away, his hand coming up in front of his face to protect himself. Ronan’s lip jutted out, confused and hurt at the clear rejection.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, stepping back himself. He had learned from tending to the various animals at the Barns that if you scared them you had to make yourself look smaller so they didn’t feel threatened anymore. He sat down on the soft grass of the mysterious forest he often dragged Declan and Matthew to so they could build their treehouse further.

The boy’s face turned to the side a bit in confusion. Ronan waited patiently until he sat down in front of him and grinned at him widely.

“I’m Ronan,” he said, taking the hand that was stretched out to him. He giggled a bit at how grown up it felt.

“Adam,” the boy, Adam, had replied, gifting Ronan a shy smile. His accent reminded Ronan of the sweet lady at the candy store who always gave him one piece of candy more when his mom’s back was turned, melodious and languid like the Henrietta sun.

“Wanna see my treehouse?” Ronan asked then, pulling Adam up by his hand when he nodded. Ronan didn’t let go of Adam’s hand, instead he let it swing between them.

“When you’re out with your brothers, remember to hold each other’s hand,” Aurora always said, right before they were running out of the door to another one of their imagined adventures. “That way you will never lose each other.”

He led Adam up the tree, showing him exactly where to climb. “My brother Declan helped me make it!” he said excitedly, showing Adam around the half finished tree-house. He brushed a dark curl out of his face but it stubbornly fell in front of his eyes again. 

Adam looked around in wonder, not ever having seen a treehouse before. “I could live here,” he said quietly, his eyes roaming over the open space. Ronan noticed Adam was starting to look quite sad and despite not getting what had upset him, he grabbed Adam’s hands and spun them around in circles until Adam let out a laugh.

“We can come back,” Ronan said when they were laying on the wooden floor, splinters probably worming their way into their skin now. His vision was still tilting a bit. He pictured them on a pirate ship, the waves causing the motion sickness instead of childlike playing. 

Adam turned to look at him, his eyes still slightly unfocussed. Ronan couldn’t help but giggle and poke Adam’s nose. He scrunched his nose at Ronan’s touch, his freckles more pronounced with them flowing into each other. “Do you mean that?”

“Of course!” Ronan answered excitedly. “We’re best friends now,” he added solemnly like he was making a great vow with the boy he had only known for an hour at most. “And best friends do things together!”

Adam gave Ronan his first actual smile then, one of his front teeth missing, the new one just poking through. The smile was cheerful and bright and Ronan couldn’t help but smile back.

And that was the start of a friendship that was supposed to follow them into adulthood. The kind of friendship that was unbreakable because you grew up together and thus understood each other better than anyone ever could. And for a while, it looked like it was headed that way.

They were inseparable for a while.

Now it was not three boys running off and using sticks to fight each other like the knights in the fairytales they read, but four. Adam was well liked by all three brothers for a different reason.

Matthew loved everyone and Adam was no different. He liked Adam a little better than most people, though, because Adam was always kind to him. Adam had put a bandage on Matthew’s newly acquired scratch wound once with practised ease and he had loved him ever since.

Declan loved Adam but he would never admit it. Even as a kid he had been closed off, hiding his true emotions and feelings within himself so he appeared as a blank slate for others to interpret how they wanted. He had never been carefree like his brothers, he never had the opportunity to, but he saw a resourcefulness and cleverness in Adam that he didn’t put into place until he was older and understood it better. Nevertheless, Declan admired him despite him being younger which was the biggest obstacle for his young age.

Ronan grew to love Adam the most. Adam was the first friend he ever really had outside of his brothers and he cherished it as much as a nine year old really could. Even when Adam was distant, fresh marks littering the skin of his small arms, Ronan tried his best to put a smile on his face because that's what friends do. He had learned to not ask about them but he asked his mom once. 

“Is he sick?” he had asked her as she was tucking him back into bed after a bad dream. “Is that why he has bruises everywhere? Is he going to die?”

“He won’t die,” Aurora had said sweetly, the hesitancy before she spoke not going unnoticed by Ronan. 

“Mom-“ Ronan had said fearfully, tears brimming in his eyes.

Aurora gently brushed one of Ronan’s curls behind his ear. “He is having a bit of a tough time at home, sweetheart.”

“We have to help him!” Ronan had said, eternally positive and kind-hearted. Aurora couldn’t help but let a prideful smile slip out. 

“Trying to help him could only make it worse,” she said softly. She couldn’t possibly explain to Ronan that child-services weren’t always reliable and that she was afraid what would happen if they deemed his parents okay. She couldn’t explain what was really happening to Ronan because as much as she feared for Adam, as much she wanted to protect Ronan from all bad, she was wired that way after all.

“Sleep now,” she said and took Ronan into her arms, singing him a lullaby until he was snoring softly, his face resting peacefully against her chest.

Aurora would remain seated like this for a long time, silently worrying about the sweet but silent boy that had walked into her boys’ lives. Her motherly instincts extended beyond just her sons and so she sat there, with Ronan in her arms, praying for Adam, begging God to give Adam the help she was too cowardly to give herself.

“We’re going to high school soon,” Ronan said, two years later the day before the summer holidays came to an end. His feet were dangling off the side of the tree house. Adam was seated next to him, doing the same, his untied shoelaces blowing in the wind. 

“Are you scared?” Adam asked, turning his head to eye Ronan for a second. He had grown a lot since they met but his face was still the same, youthful and radiating happiness. His dark curls bounced in the wind, Adam had the urge to smooth them back like he had seen Aurora do many times. 

Ronan shook his head with a laugh. “It will be fun!” He slouched in on himself a little after. “My dad says so at least.”

Adam looked out into the forest, his eyes already wise beyond their age. “I hope it will be,” he decided on, shooting Ronan a small smile. 

“We won’t see each other much once we start,” Ronan said, pulling his legs up to turn his body towards Adam, the noses of his beaten down shoes resting softly against Adam’s leg.

Adam turned around too, pressing his legs in between Ronan’s, their ankles now touching comfortably. “We won’t,” he agreed, an edge of sadness in his voice Ronan wanted to take away. 

“We’ll still be friends,” Ronan said. It was a statement, a promise, unyielding. Adam smiled, his teeth fully grown out and straight.

“Promise?” he asked, a soft smile lingering on his lips as he stuck out his pinky for Ronan to hook around with his own.

“Promise.”

They kept their pinkies hooked as they watched the sun set, each others’ touch tethering them to the last moment they would have together. 

They walked back out of the forest, waving at each other one last time before they both went their own way back home, not knowing this would be the last time they saw each other. 

Ronan often wondered what he would have done or said if he knew life would diverge the paths that had interwoven together. If he had known he would lose his best friend and made room for another that didn’t quite feel the same.

Adam had gone to school the next day with nervous butterflies fluttering in his stomach and the distant reminder that he would see Ronan again that afternoon. He’d just have to survive the day and then he’d be in the presence of someone who had become just as familiar to him as he was to himself.

His father had other plans.

It started when he came home from school and didn’t end until much later, when Adam had already left Ronan waiting in the treehouse where they were supposed to meet up.

Adam didn’t want to explain and Ronan eventually stopped waiting. 

The treehouse stood vacant, the walls holding children’s laughter and crude words written secretly underneath posters. It held childhood memories neither boy was bound to forget. It carried secrets and unexpected tears, names etched into the wood. It was empty now, present in every day thought but not in actuality anymore.

Adam wondered himself if it had ever really existed.

He had seen Ronan after their contact was lost. Many times even. It was inevitable with the size of the town. Dark curls bouncing as he ran through the street, carefree and wild as always, with a new boy at his side. Expensive glasses and straightened polos, someone Adam never had been and would never become.

Many times, Adam had punished himself in his mind for not saying something, waving at least. He always hid himself at least, watching as Ronan passed him by. It always left him with an ache in his heart, a loss he couldn’t put into words. Miserable wasn’t a word strong enough for what he felt. Losing Ronan was much greater than misery could describe.

The pain faded after time, still present sometimes but not a constant anymore.

Ronan still thought of the sun-kissed boy often, wondered what had happened to him, what made him turn away from him.

But he had found Gansey, who was much different from Adam but eerily alike him too sometimes. Earning Gansey’s friendship was something he was proud of and he admired Gansey like he did no other, but it wasn’t the same feeling he used to have with Adam. It was not something he could put into words but it was something undeniably present.

He was thankful for Gansey though and grew to love him more like a brother than he did Declan, someone who had grown to become the person who had to face his anger, his malice, his pain and take it in stride because he was the ‘man of the house’ now that his father was gone.

It was Gansey who hugged him close when Ronan broke down again, plagued by nightmares of his father’s death. It was Gansey who didn’t protest when he had to help put the tattoo cream on when he went off to the tattoo parlour with a snarl and a fake-id. It was Gansey who let him live with him when he was banned from the Barns.

If Ronan had looked closer and didn’t turn away at his father’s face reflected in Declan’s own, he would have known Declan would have done this for him too. He would have held his younger brother like his mother once had, comforted himself by the nightmares that were plaguing him too. He would have lectured him on the tattoo, sure, but he would have helped him. Because that is what big brothers do and he used to be the best one in Ronan’s eyes.

Ronan’s eyes were elsewhere, set on drag-racing now, drinking until he forgot about his father, about his failing grades, about the crushes he had on the wrong people, about the boy with the sad eyes that still plagued him when he closed his eyes.

A boy he thought he’d never see again.

Until he was there, pushing his bike forward on the small hill he had to climb. It was years later, both starting junior year now. He was still on the thin side, though Ronan now understood why, but there were muscles straining in his arms too. His freckles were still just as apparent, his hands bigger but still just as boyish. Ronan remembered holding it tightly as they rushed off a hill just as big as this one. His stance was determined, his thin lips pulled tight. They met each other's eyes once before Ronan sunk back, shaking his head at a confused Gansey who had slowed down the Pig. Gansey pressed down on the gas pedal again and Ronan blamed the racing of his heart on the speed.

“ _ Please, _ ” he prayed in his head, closing his eyes at the force of the word.

He didn’t know what he prayed for. Please, let this be another chance? Please, let me have one more conversation with someone that had meant so much to me for so long? Please, don’t ruin me because I can’t bear more pain.

“ _ Please _ ,” he prayed again and let Gansey drive them away, leaving Adam as nothing but a spot in the distance.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](clawsnbeak.tumblr.com)!


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